THE UNRESOLVED ‘DIFFERENCE OVER THE NAME’:1 A GREEK PERSPECTIVE Evangelos Kofos I. THE COURSE OF A NAME DISPUTE: FROM INDEPENDENCE TO UN MEDIATION AND THE INTERIM ACCORD 1. Introduction The Interim Accord between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), which was signed in New York on 13 September 1995, initiated a process of normalising and laying the foundations for constructive relations of co-operation and trust between the two countries. Equally important, however, was its missing dimension: how to address a problem which had bedevilled the two countries for the previous four years (from September 1991 to September 1995). That problem was none other than the ‘difference over the name of the state’ — as the UN –––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1. ‘The difference over the name of the state’ was the phrase used in UN Secu- rity Council resolution 817/7.4.1993, which called upon Greece and FYROM to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Ten years on, ‘the difference over the name’ persists. 126 Evangelos Kofos Security Council phrased it — which ‘needs to be resolved in the interest of maintaining peaceful and good-neighbourly relations in the region’ (UN S/RES 817/1993).2 During the preceding period, 1993–5, the failure to resolve it had had a detrimental effect both on bilateral relations and on the wider Balkan region. This was especially the case when a Greek blockade was forced upon FYROM from March 1994 to September 1995. This study investigates the reasons why - despite a decade of diplomatic endeavours and a new era of constructive bilateral relations initiated in 1995 with the signing of an Interim Accord under UN auspices - the 1993 Security Council resolution on the name issue has not been resolved. The issue will be addressed on two levels. First, the ‘official level’, on which the government policies and negotiating strategy were constructed in an international and bilateral framework. Second, on a level which relates to the ‘public perception’ of the problem and the articulation of the public debate. 2. Greek concerns and approaches to the problem Anyone who is well versed in twentieth-century Greek politics will easily recognise in the Greek arguments of the early 1990s the impact of Greek security concerns dating from the traumatic war experiences (1940–9) in connection with the Macedonian question.3 The beginning of the collapse of the Yugoslav –––––––––––––––––––––––––– 2. The full text of the resolution may be found in Ioannis Valinakis-Sotiris Dalis (eds.), The Skopje Question: Official Documents 1990–1996, with an introduction by Evangelos Kofos and a foreword by Theodoros Couloumbis, 2nd edition, Athens, 1996, pp. 147–148 [in Greek]. 3. Evangelos Kofos, ‘Greek policy considerations over FYROM’s independence and recognition’, in James Pettifer (ed.), The New Macedonian Question, London, Macmillan Press, 1999, pp. 226–233. The unresolved ‘difference over the name’: A Greek perspective 127 Federation in 1991 brought back obsessive feelings of uncertainty in a rapidly changing world north of the Greek border, at a time when the very real danger of a Greek–Turkish confrontation was simmering to the east. Furthermore, since the mid-1980s, wider segments of Greek public opinion, particularly among the Greek Macedonian diaspora, had been aware of another kind of concern: that of the gradual erosion of Greek Macedonian cultural identity and historical heritage by Slav-Macedonian nationalism.4 This was the climate in Greece when Yugoslavia’s southernmost federated republic — the Socialist Republic of Macedonia — declared itself, on 17 September 1991, an independent state under the name of the ‘Republic of Macedonia’. The European Community, pressed by the then Greek Foreign Minister, Andonis Samaras, responded to the new state’s request for recognition with three conditions. The first was that it would make no territorial claims against its neighbours. The second that it would not engage in propaganda against Greece, and the third that it would not use a name that implied territorial claims (resolution of the EC Council of Foreign Ministers, 16 December 1991).5 The wording confirms that the Greek position was focused specifically on security concerns, in particular that their northern neighbour should not constitute a base for interests hostile to Greece; that any possibility of stirring up and promoting irredentist demands and visions should be nipped in the bud; and that a specific commitment should be given not to engage in ‘hostile propaganda’. The purpose of the last point was mainly to prevent the fomentation of a minority question, –––––––––––––––––––––––––– 4. Ibid, and in the slightly modified Evangelos Kofos, ‘Greece’s Macedonian Adventure: The Controversy over FYROM’s Independence and Recognition’, in Van Coufoudakis et al. (eds.), Greece and the New Balkans: Challenges and Opportunities, New York, Pella, 1999, pp. 361–394. 5. For the text of the resolution, see Valinakis-Dalis, op. cit., pp. 51–52. 128 Evangelos Kofos chiefly through pressure for the return of Slav-Macedonians who had fled Greece in the period 1944–9. In the next two months Samaras addressed two substantive communications to his European counterparts — a long circular and an even longer oral presentation6 — while the President of the Hellenic Republic, Constantine Karamanlis, addressed a brief letter to the leaders of the member-states of the European Community.7 As political texts, the Foreign Minister’s communications based their argumentation on an analysis of the threat to the security of both Greece and the wider region, with specific reference to the fanning of Bulgarian and Albanian nationalism. In contrast to the popular rallies of the time which were dominated by issues of historical identity and cultural heritage, the official texts treated the cultural aspect of the problem as a matter of secondary importance. And when they did mention it, it was in order to make foreign interlocutors aware of the importance of averting confrontations and threats to peace on account of cultural controversies. Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that the Macedonian name was already widely used in the region of northern Greece. This region was actually called ‘Macedonia’, was larger than FYROM both geographically and demographically, and, above all, was inhabited by two and a half million Greeks who identified themselves by their regional name, Makedones (Macedonians). ‘If Skopje is given the right not only to usurp but, as an independent state, to monopolize the [Macedonian] name,’ Samaras concluded in his address at the EC Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Lisbon on 17 February 1992, then ‘it will unleash old quarrels and new conflicts in the whole region on –––––––––––––––––––––––––– 6. Texts and analysis in Aristotle Tziampiris, Greece, European Political Cooperation and the Macedonian Question, Ashgate, 2000, pp. 207–213, 218–232. 7. Valinakis-Dalis, op. cit., pp. 63–64. The unresolved ‘difference over the name’: A Greek perspective 129 a wild scale.’8 In a sense, this was a foretaste of Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’. For his part, President Karamanlis, a Macedonian himself, emphasised mainly historical and cultural arguments in his letter to his European counterparts asserting that FYROM had ‘absolutely no right, either historical or ethnological, to use the name Macedonia’. A year later, in January 1993, Greece’s new Foreign Minister, Michalis Papakonstandinou, also a Macedonian, submitted an interesting ‘memorandum’ to the United Nations. In it, he opposed FYROM’s admission to the United Nations under the name of the ‘Republic of Macedonia’ and with a flag bearing the symbol of the ‘sun of Vergina’. Here too, emphasis was initially placed upon security concerns supported by appendices of maps and published texts, reflecting FYROM’s alleged territorial aspirations against Greece. Again, the name was cited as a fundamental source of disagreement: FYROM was seeking to ‘monopolise’ the Macedonian name, despite the fact that it occupied only 38.5 per cent of the territory of Macedonia, compared to over 51 per cent for Greek Macedonia. The name thus ‘conveys in itself expansionist visions both over the land and the patrimony of Macedonia through the centuries’ (emphasis added).9 The events that followed are known well enough. The memorandum’s arguments, which were presented in strikingly moderate tones for the time (in comparison, to be sure, to the electrified atmosphere in Greece and the diaspora), led to the aforementioned Security Council resolution 817/1993. The new state was accepted into the United Nations under the provisional name of the ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ –––––––––––––––––––––––––– 8. The text of the address was first published in Tziampiris, op. cit., p. 227. 9. See the full text in Valinakis-Dalis, op. cit., pp. 129–137. 130 Evangelos Kofos (FYROM) but without the right to fly the flag bearing the ‘sun of Vergina’. At the same time the Secretary General was entrusted to mediate a solution to the difference over the name.10 Intensive negotiations followed with Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen acting as mediators. Eventually, a text that regulated all aspects of the two countries’ bilateral relations and proposed a composite name — ‘Nova Makedonija’ — for international use was produced.11 Internal pressure in both countries, though primarily in Greece, left the proposal in limbo for about a year. The issue returned to the forefront in 1994–5, when the Vance–Owen draft (excluding the paragraphs about the name) was used as the basis for the Interim Accord of September 1995.12 Throughout this four year period, individuals and groups in Greece and the Greek diaspora expressed their views and demanded a share in the handling of the ‘national issue’. The role of the 1992 and 1993 mass rallies has been widely seen as contributing to the development of a highly charged and uncompromising movement. Under these circumstances, Greek political leaders realised that any divergence from the dominant popular perception would carry a huge political price for them.